Sins of the Father
by nathan-p
Summary: Trust no one. Especially not mad scientists with animal companions. But Max is stuck between a rock and a hard place: it's the man with the cat, or a painful death. And the man with the cat says he'll bring Fang back... T for lolfax, derp.
1. Wake Up

Chapter One: Wake Up

In my dreams I'm still the same. No pinfeathers on the nape of my neck or my arms, no scaly, rough skin on my legs; no changing hearing or loosening teeth: just Maximum Ride, the same as always.

Mostly when I dream I'm still in the School, trapped in a cage. Sometimes I'm little, and all alone in a white room. Sometimes I'm the same age I am now, and my flock are with me, caged just out of arm's length. And sometimes I'm dying, somehow I know I'm dying, and Fang is there as my organs fail and I lie alone in a cage; he's telling me it's all right to give up, that everyone eventually loses, that he'll take care of what remains of the flock.

That dream is the worst, because I can't afford to give up. I'm mankind's last hope, maybe the world's last hope: I am the last thing standing between us and the end of the world.

Or so I have been told.

* * *

I woke up with a pounding headache and the reek of alcohol in my nose. I pressed my hands to my temples, trying to shut down the pain - _pain is only a message, pain is only a message_ - but the pain throbbed on, like someone was driving nails into my head.

"Where is this?"

I probably didn't want to know, but it couldn't hurt to ask.

"The headache will pass," a voice said. Not an answer to my question. Fine. My eyelids felt like they were glued together, but my hearing was fine, and the voice was faintly familiar. It was cool and accented, like Dr. Hans's had been, but not as heavily accented... hmm. "Other than that, how are you feeling?"

"Like I got run over by a truck," I croaked. I felt like I was covered in a million bruises, and all of my muscles burned as if I'd strained them. I shifted around to alleviate some of the pressure, and something occurred to me. I patted around with my hands, brushing against cool metal and smooth leather. "What's with the wheelchair?"

"The wheelchair is standard procedure." I heard no disdain in the voice; it was silky and calm, and I still couldn't identify it. "May we have a civil discussion?"

I couldn't see whoever was speaking well enough to stare, although my vision was beginning to clear up, but I could _hear_ that his voice was coming from directly in front of me, within about six feet, and I shot him the best glare I could muster. "I'm Maximum Ride. I don't do civil."

There was an amused chuckle, and I blinked, straining to make out the form in front of me. I could make out a dark suit and blond hair, but not much else - he was Caucasian, that much I could see, and pale enough that he almost blended in with the creamy-colored wallpaper. Probably European of some sort from the accent. "You may have to be civil, at least for the moment." He cleared his throat. "You are familiar with Jeb Batchelder?"

"Never heard of him in my life," I said, putting all my snark and sarcasm into the lie.

I heard a sigh. "Dr. Batchelder is a colleague of mine." My opponent - and anyone who puts me in a wheelchair is an opponent - leaned back in his chair. "Yesterday he contacted me; he believes you are in need of my help."

"Why would I need _your_ help?"

"I'm not the one in a wheelchair, Max," the silky voice said gently, and I made out little round glasses, wire-framed like Jeb's, and a pair of water-blue eyes set above prominent cheekbones in a thin face.

"I don't even know your name!"

My vision continued to clear, and I saw a mischievous sparkle in those all-too-familiar blue eyes. "We've met before." He stood and came around the front of his desk, extending a hand for me to shake. I stared at it pointedly until he dropped the issue and retreated to stand behind his desk.

_Max, +1._

"I am Doctor Roland ter Borcht, genetic engineer," said my new - or maybe not-so-new, if he was telling the truth - foe, "formerly of Itexicon Worldwide." He indicated me with one outstretched hand. "You are Maximum Ride, terrorist and rebel, anti-establishment to her bones." He smiled. "Now that we've been introduced, may we get down to business, please?"

I could see him distinctly now where he stood with one arm draped across the back of his chair, and I was thinking one thing and one only: _where's the real ter Borcht's body hidden?_ This wasn't him. Couldn't be him. The ter Borcht I'd encountered last year had been fatter, much more annoying, and his accent could've stripped paint.

This guy, while still Eurotrashy, was thin, trying his hardest to be suave, and didn't _seem_ to be in the business of torturing children anymore. Although, given the wheelchair and that this was my life, you never knew. He probably had a secret lab in the basement.

"What's 'business'?" I asked.

He ran one hand through his hair; no longer oily, unwashed, and totally gross, it stood up in gravity-defying chunks, and from what I could see, was totally _sans_ styling product. Hmm. Was he taking styling tips from Jeb? I'd seen the same, uh, 'hairstyle' on him quite often. "_You_ are business, Maximum."

I braced myself to leap from the wheelchair and throttle him. _One more word. Just __try__ me._

He put up one hand before I could jump him, smiling casually. "No, no need to panic. Jeb wants me to save your life."

"I'm not dying," I said (never show weakness, Jeb had taught us once, a lifetime ago), but I couldn't help but think: I didn't know how I'd gotten here, and I'd been feeling like crap for the past few weeks. But whoever this was didn't need to know that. It didn't matter.

"Your body says otherwise, Max." He smiled again, the expression more sad this time, and adjusted his glasses. "To be more exact, you are unraveling on a genetic level. You are coming apart at the level of your cells. Eventually that process will kill you."

"And how long is eventually?" The least I could do was indulge him. I felt fine. He'd probably tranquilized me to get me here, anyway.

He shrugged. "A few years at the most. Months at the least."

"So how do you know I'm dying?" I was stuck here for the foreseeable future, and I might as well make the best of it, I figured.

"Your headaches are due to increased intracranial pressure - something is causing your brain to press against the inside of your skull," he said. "Your vocal cords are deteriorating, atrophying. The distribution of your feathers is changing. Most worryingly, I am told you are suffering from blackouts, during which you act irrationally and recognize no one."

He wasn't faking; a laundry list like that was hard to fake. And I recognized the 'intracranial pressure' thing: it was often a harbinger of death for a failing experiment. As a child I'd seen heads literally explode; it wasn't common, but it did happen.

I'd always suspected that someday I would begin to fall apart and die; I'd tried to tell myself that me and my flock were different, that we'd live long, normal lives. But it _sounded_ like I was beginning to unravel like so much cheap fabric - like we weren't so different at all.

I rubbed my temples with both hands, grinding the knuckles into the bone, trying reflexively to get rid of an ache that, if my new friend here were correct, wasn't going to go away until my head exploded. And I didn't want my head to explode.

"Jeb never told us anything about this," I said. When we were in the E-shaped house, I had asked him if we were going to come apart like all the other failures at the School. He'd told me no.

"He didn't know." I saw a momentary glimmer of _sadness_ in his eyes. What the hell... "You're mutating on your own now."

"Yeah, Jeb mentioned that one," I snapped.

"That's why he referred you to me," said ter Borcht - I had no better name for him, so ter Borcht was going to have to do. "The School never intended for something like this to happen to you, and so they never planned for it."

_Yeah, that's usually the way it goes... no one ever plans for me._

"What makes you so special?" Other than possibly being replaced by an imposter.

He smirked. I heard a faint meow somewhere in the room - _what the_... "Since Itexicon - collapsed, I've been working here." He spread his arms, indicating the compound at large (or so I guessed, at least; maybe we were just in one room out in the middle of nowhere). "Not to boast, but we are the primary researchers into recombinant DNA structure and behavior. Think of us like medical doctors, Max," he said, and apparently he had no idea how creepy he sounded. "We know how you and your flock are... put together. And we know, theoretically, how to fix your problems, including this one. That's why Jeb sent you here."

"Theoretically," I repeated.

He nodded. "Yes. Theoretically, although I have cause to believe that our methods will work to cure you."

Let the record show that when a mad scientist, or someone who claims to be one, says they have cause to believe something, it means they tortured someone to death to get that information. Just for your information.

"Well... theoretically I think you're a dick," I said, and decided the conversation was over. I put my hands on the arms of the wheelchair and got up.

The only thing ter Borcht did as I heaved myself out of the stupid thing was raise an eyebrow. Huh. Maybe I could learn to like this guy - he wasn't calling Flyboys on me or actively attempting to kill me in any other way, after all, and that was a definite plus.

He checked his watch. "You have two minutes, Max."

Two minutes to _what_?

I scanned the room and located a door, which I oriented myself to face. I decided to regard his statement as something optimistic: I had two minutes, and if I had escaped by the end of them, I could stay out, alive, and free.

I made my first stride towards freedom, accompanied by the blessed quiet of no shrieking alarms or jackbooted footsteps... and then something entangled itself around my ankles.

Before everything went fuzzy, I had time to look down and see the agent of my doom: no, not a ninja star to the Achilles tendon; no, not a lasso wrapped around my ankles.

An ordinary-looking brown house cat was purring ecstatically as it twined around my legs, and I went down for the count.

* * *

I was drowning in grey haze; I couldn't breathe, couldn't move, couldn't think...

There was a mask on my face, cold plastic over my nose and mouth, cool air forcing its way down my throat. My hindbrain, conditioned by ten years of pain and torture, shrieked that someone was trying to kill me, that I was dying, but I couldn't raise my arms from my sides to bat the mask away.

My senses began to return to me. The mask disappeared, and I felt that I was lying in a bed - it was hard and unyielding, not like my bed at home. _Of course not, we don't have an oxygen mask at home, _I scolded myself.

I could move my arms again, and I twitched them back and forth, trying to build up the energy to... do something. I wasn't sure what, exactly. Anything at all would be better than just lying there helpless in a strange place.

I felt a gentle tug, and the slide of a needle leaving the skin of my hand. _An IV? Why?_ What was someone trying to do to me?

Someone put a bandage over the place where the IV needle had been, and I wanted to smile, although my face wouldn't respond. I'd had more IVs during my first ten years than I'd had hot meals, but this was the first time someone had given me a bandage after taking one out.

I wondered if it had a kids' cartoon character on it; apparently that was what they did for non bird-freak children, out there in the real world.

That would be kind of nice.

I drifted for a while in the haze, and eventually came back to myself a bit faster than I'd have liked when a cat jumped on me.

_Dammit, _I thought, mostly for the fact that though I was instantly awake, my limbs largely refused to flail. I felt a twitch of my hands and feet, but nothing else.

Someone scooped the cat off of my stomach and scolded it; I recognized the language as German, but couldn't tell what was being said. I listened intently anyway; you never knew what someone might give away when talking to Mr. Purr.

"Schlecter Kaetschen." The voice was soft, soft enough that I couldn't tell who was speaking. Maybe it was fake ter Borcht. I heard a cat meowing, and then the low rumble of a content purr. "Kein Springen auf den Patienten."

I could make out _patient_ in that, and _Kaetschen_ sounded kind of like cat, maybe.

Who was I kidding? I didn't have the time to pick up languages; all my spare time went to the saving-the-world gig.

I didn't want to alert my visitor (visitors, if you counted the cat) to the fact that I was awake, so I kept my eyes shut and focused on listening.

Eventually, the inevitable happened, and I fell asleep as the cat purred like a happy lawnmower.

* * *

The next time I woke up was slightly less sudden, and I could move my arms. My head was sore, so, naturally, the first thing I did was touch it, make sure it was still there.

My head was there.

My hair was not.

Not all of it, anyway - a patch near the nape of my neck had been shaven off.

I felt around the shaven patch - there was a raised line there, like a healing scar, and something sticky that made my fingertips feel gross. I took my hand away and scrubbed it on the thin sheet.

So. Someone had done something to my head. I didn't know what... but I knew I wasn't freaked out.

Which meant that whatever they'd done had been serious. I don't react well to surprise surgery, and the lack of freakout tension in my muscles meant that they'd actually knocked me out for whatever they did.

I couldn't do anything about it having happened, though, given that to my knowledge I didn't possess the ability to travel in time.

I pushed myself into a sitting position and cradled my head in my hands. The movement made me feel dizzy and slightly nauseous, which didn't combine well with how hungry I felt.

OK, first goal after getting the heck out of here: hit up a Mickey D's.

You know how hospital beds usually have those rail things on the sides so you can't roll off? They were missing on one side - and on that side, an unfolded wheelchair sat patiently, apparently waiting for me to get into it.

There was a piece of white paper on the seat, folded neatly in half.

Constitutionally speaking, I'm unable to resist a mystery.

I leaned over, reached down, and scooped up the piece of paper. I unfolded it; it was written on in neat, spiky handwriting that I _almost_ recognized.

_Maximum._ (Note to any potential or current mad scientists in my audience: my name is _Max._ M - A - X. Get it right.)

_You are free to explore the grounds, though I politely request that you contact me before leaving the floor you are currently on, as my security clearance will allow you to access all areas you should wish to see._

_I have no secrets to hide from you, Maximum. This is a place of healing, and you will find no torture chambers._

_However, if you wish to look, that is your decision._

_If you are hungry, I will be more than happy to escort you to the cafeteria. My office is down the hall on your left, the fifth door on your right. I will be waiting there for you._

_I hope that a tour of this facility will serve to convince you of our altruistic intentions. If it does not... that's your issue, not mine._

It was signed simply "Roland ter Borcht". So whoever I was dealing with was apparently at least convinced that he was my old nemesis. Interesting. He might actually _be_ my old nemesis, but the differences between them said otherwise to me.

Below the signature was another section of text, probably written in after the fact. I glanced at it.

_You will probably be most interested in the hospital wards where our current patients stay. Unfortunately, they are not accessible to someone with your security clearance._

_You figure it out._

The only response I could think of to that was one of Iggy's favorites.

"Bite me," I muttered to the note, and kept reading.

_Incidentally, I would not recommend walking at the moment. If you wish to risk it, go ahead and try, but please understand that there is a reason I've provided you with a wheelchair._

_In addition, you will understandably have questions regarding what happened to you while you were unconscious. I will gladly answer them._

"OK, OK, I get it," I said, and folded the note in half again, sliding it into my shirt pocket for future reference. So he wanted to see me. Couldn't he just say as much? I hate this deceptive crap. I'm a busy girl, I don't have time to waste being clever with mad scientists.

Actually, I don't have time to waste with mad scientists at all. Ten years was plenty.

I glanced at the wheelchair. The last time I'd been in one had been a less-than-pleasant experience, to say the least.

The veiled threat in the note about what might happen if I _didn't_ use the wheelchair made me think that it might be an acceptable alternative to... who knew what. Hopefully it was just "you'll pass out if you don't", but it _could_ be "you will die painfully if you don't". I didn't want to take that chance, not at this juncture in time.

I sighed and manuevered myself into the wheelchair. It wasn't the option I'd have liked to have taken, but it was better than staying in bed.

There was one definite benefit to this place, I had to say: while I didn't wake up in my own clothes, I didn't wake up in a hospital gown either. Instead I was wearing a very boring pair of minty green scrubs with slits helpfully cut in the back for my wings.

Of course, that meant that someone had _dressed me_ while I was unconscious, which was pretty creepy, but hey, at least I was wearing clothes.

I wheeled myself to the doorway of the room I was in - some kind of infirmary, by my estimation - and peered outside. Or attempted to - the door stayed shut even when I rolled right up to it.

I slammed one palm against the door. "Hello! Open up!"

"Authorization, please," said a female voice that brought me unpleasant associations: the public address system in airports, the alert system in the School, Marian Janssen... jeez, it was like a carnival of fun nasties from my past.

"Let me out," I snarled, banging my palm on the door again. My hand was beginning to sting - stupid metal door - but someone would eventually hear and let me out of this crazy place.

Right?

"Authorization, please," repeated the door.

(_I'm talking to a door,_ I thought. _There have been weirder moments in my life, but not by much._)

I huffed in irritation. "Max Ride."

"Incorrect. Authorization, please."

I told the door what it could do to its mother; I told it about its mother's ancestry and sexual preferences; I suggested improbable sexual acts to it; I wrapped up with an invitation to perform an impossible act upon itself with the suggestion that it also involve a goat.

"Authorization, please."

I took a deep breath. Well, it had just failed my version of the Turing test, there was that.

"Maximum Ride," I said tightly, suppressing the urge to throw a few choice swear words in there somewhere, maybe more than a few. Like about ten, let's say.

I really do hate being talked to by things I can't see.

"Authorization accepted," said the door, and hissed open.

I rolled through the doorway just as fast as I could. I did _not_ want to risk having to go through that again. My name is _Max._ Not _Maximum._

Once I was in the hallway I stopped to have a look around. White, sparkly clean, smelling faintly of... something pleasant I couldn't quite identify, kind of spicy. It was a nice change from alcohol, that was for sure.

The floor was tile as far as I could see in either direction, and there were signs on the walls telling me where things were in helpful large type.

I focused on putting the wheelchair into a turn, remembering what ter Borcht had written in his note (fake ter Borcht, whatever, I didn't really care at the moment): _left, fifth door on the right._

I hate wheelchairs, have I mentioned that yet?

I rolled up to the fifth door and rubbed my hands on my pants (as much as they qualified for that designation). Ow. If this was going to be a semi-permanent feature, I was going to ask for _gloves. _My palms were already getting chapped.

I raised a hand and knocked on the door, my best shake-the-walls, open-up-it's-the-police knock. If you have to knock, you might as well do it with style, that's my motto.

The door opened and I wheeled myself inside. Then it hissed shut behind me. If I lived in this place a hundred years (and hopefully I wouldn't be here for _nearly_ that long) I would never get used to that. It just wasn't right, doors that shut themselves.

Kind of cool, I had to admit, but _not right_.

Fake ter Borcht was sitting at the desk, petting a cat - the same cat, might I add, that I had tripped over, and probably the same (or at least so I suspected) that had jumped on me. He looked up as though he'd been expecting me when he heard the door hiss shut, which didn't surprise me, because the note had pretty much said: _I'll be expecting you._ I wouldn't be surprised if it contained those exact words, but I wasn't exactly going to check right then.

I'd never seriously expected to see someone sitting in a chair stroking a cat after inviting me to their office. Check that off my list of things to do before I die.

Fake ter Borcht leaned over and put the cat down on the ground; I rolled cautiously forward to a position in front of his desk, about where I'd been sitting the last time we talked. It was a mad scientist's cat, I knew that, but it was still a _cat_, and I couldn't just run over what I couldn't be sure was anything but a normal, innocent little kittycat. Wouldn't be right; I'm the hero, not the villain, and heroes don't run over kittycats with their wheelchairs.

I raised one finger before fake ter Borcht could say anything. "I have some questions for you."

He shrugged. "Ask away, Max."

Max, not Maximum. Huh. Maybe he was making progress.

Now, if he could only teach the _doors_ my name, _then_ I'd be willing to give the man some real points.

I leaned forward in my chair. "What did you do to me?"

"What?" He looked confused - about as confused as I felt, actually. "What do you mean?"

"Some of my hair's gone and there's sticky crap on my head. _What did you do to me?_"

"Oh." His expression brightened up a bit. "We had to perform a little, ah, surgery on you. Nothing major."

He saw my glare and hastily added on to his inconclusive, rather weaselly statements.

"We siphoned off some of your cerebrospinal fluid before it could cause permanent damage to your brain by putting it under crushing pressure," he recited. Did he have to give this explanation often? "Normally in situations such as this we install a shunt to drain off excess cerebrospinal fluid, but in this case we could only presume consent to maintain essential life functions."

How oddly sweet - a mad scientist had had me unconscious on an operating table and _hadn't_ decided to see how much of me he could change before I kicked the bucket. "In addition, monitoring you in the recovery room, we saw cerebrospinal fluid being replaced at no more rapid a rate than usual, so we saw no need to perform a second surgery to install a shunt."

It was depressing how much of that I understood, really.

"Any other questions?" he said, in that silky voice that confirmed to me that this had to be an imposter, because there was no way that the soup doctor's voice could have changed that much in so little time.

"When can we tour the labs?"

He blinked once in surprise. "Any time you like - would you like to go after we finish our little conversation, or-"

"As soon as possible," I said.

"-after we have lunch," he continued smoothly. "All right then. We'll go as soon as I've answered any _other_ questions you have."

_What is the meaning of life? Will I ever find true love? Who moved my cheese?_ A million dumb questions flitted through my mind while I stared at him across the desk - to his credit, he stared back, blue eyes unblinking and mild behind those little glasses - but I eventually settled on one.

"What do you know about Dr. Hans Gunther-Hagen?" I asked him.

He seemed genuinely caught off-guard - however, given how determinedly cool this guy was, all I got was a slight widening of his eyes and one raised eyebrow. The man could compete with Spock in a most-expressionless competition and make it a close race.

He closed his eyes for a moment, then reopened them, apparently using the time to phrase himself.

"Hans Gunther-Hagen, to the best of my knowledge," he said slowly, "is living in Stuttgart, Germany, where he is living a quiet life as a botanical researcher." His eyes moved to the chair I was sitting in, and I realized, one moment before fake ter Borcht effectively told me, that I was in a whole lot of trouble. "The last time I saw him, he was in a wheelchair like the one you are in right now. He was... crippled in a car accident when we were younger."

I laughed. It seemed kind of cruel, but I couldn't keep it in. "You're not fooling me. He's not in a _wheelchair_, and he sure as hell isn't in Germany. As far as _I_ know, he's living in Malibu, and he's a card-carrying nutjob."

I was ready to keep going - _This was a test, and you failed_ - when something happened that I had honestly never seen before.

Fake ter Borcht went white. I mean that almost literally - all the color drained from his face and his lips thinned so much they almost disappeared.

"That cannot be," he said softly.

"Well, it is," I said cheerfully.

"Are you sure?" he said.

"Absolutely. I saw him two months ago," I said, putting as much sunshine into my voice as I could muster (and yes, that is a figure of speech, not a random new power - how much would that suck, really, the room lighting up every time you spoke?). "When was the last time _you_ saw him, doc?"

Fake ter Borcht put his head in his hands.

I had the feeling that what had been a simple charity case for him - cure the birdkid, get invited back to all the good mad-scientist parties - had just turned into something a lot more complicated.

I kept on smiling. It wasn't _my_ problem.


	2. Maximum Ride, Squishface

Chapter Two: The Softening of Maximum Ride

I was not, in any way, prepared for this. Let the record show that, if it shows nothing else in my favor.

I had known Hans since we were students together, what seemed like a lifetime ago. I had thought us good friends - when almost the entire scientific community cut itself off from me when I was institutionalized, Hans alone continued to write to me, to actively seek me out when he could. I had returned the favor, writing whenever I could spare the moment, calling when I had access to a telephone and was not too tired to speak.

But how long had it been since we met in person?

I couldn't be sure - I counted backwards in my head, trying to make an estimate. Before I had left Germany, certainly.

"Last May," I told the almost-stranger in the wheelchair, and she grinned, with a look in her eyes like that in a guard dog's before it attaches itself to your leg or some other body part of which you are fond.

She shrugged. "I'd never seen him before two months ago. Maybe before then he was in a wheelchair and living in Germany."

I doubted that. I knew him almost better than he knew himself - he had always hated traveling, and the aversion only increased after the accident. He might have been persuaded to come to Berlin, perhaps under duress and after much pleading from me to Paris or to London, but never to the United States.

I couldn't just _say_ that to this girl, though - I had to think over my response. To speak hastily would be to destroy my whole endeavor to save her, and I could never forgive myself if I caused her, however indirectly, to die. Despite any bad press to the contrary, I do _not_ enjoy having blood on my hands; I prefer to keep my metaphorical guilt representations to the lowest possible amount. Although if you listened to Americans of certain political beliefs, I had already shed enough blood to fill a metaphorical swimming pool. My literal bloodshed is still a very small amount, mostly attributable to drunken fistfights before I attained my doctorate (and a very few afterward, I am ashamed to say but must admit in the interest of full disclosure) or to my clumsiness in shaving.

"No," I said, "I'm certain he hasn't left Germany. We shall see, though, which of us is correct."

I was done with the discussion, at any rate - I was growing increasingly more confused the more I allowed myself to think about what she said. Assuming she wasn't lying (which was always a dicey proposition with _Maximum Ride_, savior of the universe), one of my oldest friends must be.

I could, however, solve this problem quite simply once I had satisfied whatever demands the girl made of me; call Hans and ask him where he was. To my mind it was, while not foolproof, a quick test as to his whereabouts, if of nothing else: the only number I had for him, you see, was that for his landline telephone in Stuttgart.

A thought struck me. I could also ask Max a few questions that could help greatly in this mystery.

"Tell me - does the Gunther-Hagen you know have a limp?"

"Not that I noticed, no," she said, absently tapping the fingers of one hand against the armrest of the wheelchair. "Maybe he got physical therapy or something, or maybe I just wasn't looking for one. Does he limp?"

I felt an unwelcome tightness in my throat as I spoke, the proverbial 'lump in the throat'.

"Johannes Gunther-Hagen," I told her, "is missing both of his legs above the knee, and has been since 1987." I could have told her the exact date he had lost them, and almost the exact time with some adjustment for time zones, but I left it out - there is such a thing as too much information. If she asked, though, I could tell her.

To her credit, she didn't seem surprised at all, though I saw her eyebrows lift slightly, which is a common reaction attributable to many emotions, not only surprise. "Yeah, maybe that isn't him. The guy I met definitely had legs," she mused. "They could still be the same guy, though."

"How is that, do you suppose?" I said. To the best of my awareness, even Itexicon had not had the ability to replace lost limbs to that extent. A foot they could have managed, but the complex jointing of the ankle could not be generated in the lab as yet, nor resurrected from the cadaver. And to restore Hans's legs to him, they would have had to not only create or successfully restore two ankles, but also two fully functional knees. Neither of those joints are very complex in and of themselves, but a single wrong part in them and it all fell to bits.

As to prosthetics - I was on solid ground here, and I knew that Hans firmly rejected the idea. His wheelchair, he said, was good enough for him.

Would he take a new set of legs - real, living legs - if he were given the opportunity?

That I did not know.

She grinned, showing that same guard-dog smile. "I'll tell you - _after_ we tour your laboratories, and _after_ I get some lunch."

"Fine."

I was determined not to get into an argument with a _child_. It was far too early for that; it would have to wait at least until afternoon. Coffee alone was not enough to prepare me for such an entanglement.

I rose from my chair and called Josie to me with a snap of my fingers - I am quite proud to say that she was not a product of any laboratory, but instead an accident of nature. Her biddable nature is not my doing, and I might be embarassed if it were - cats, after all, are supposed to be disobedient, not to come at the call of their names.

"Then let's go tour the laboratories," I said to Max, stepping toward the door with Josie at my heels.

She snapped off a salute. "Jawohl!"

God have mercy on my soul.

* * *

We didn't get very far.

Accompanied by me, Max was allowed to enter the laboratories; this she managed quite well, not even knocking over a single lab tech with her wheelchair. She navigated with alacrity, which rather surprised me; most people are quite clumsy in a chair on their first day using it, but not she.

I report with some degree of pride that Max only ran over my toes once during our tour, and quick-footed Josie kept out of the way entirely.

So it was neither the wheelchair nor the laboratories which caused the trouble: it was the contents of the laboratories, as she insisted on calling our hospital wards. (Truthfully, they don't look much like hospital wards, which explained her terminology difficulty.)

"Oh my god what is _that_."

In my inattention, I walked right into her as Max suddenly stopped, and had to jump out of her way as she began slowly moving backwards.

"What is _what_?" I said. I had been occupied by my own thoughts, and was less than pleased, I admit, to have been removed from them.

"That thing!" She pointed with a shaking hand to the corner, where a familiar orange form was using its pseudopods to feed itself. "What _is_ that?"

"That would be Morry," I said as the Thing in question turned its attention to us, apparently having heard our voices, or otherwise become aware of our presence. Its pseudopods retracted from the bowl of candy on which it had been feeding, and it emitted a cheerful, high-pitched noise before moving rapidly in our direction.

"You gave it a _name_?" said Max, scooting behind me as I stepped seamlessly in front of her and knelt to intercept Morry on his trajectory for the new arrival in his home.

"We gave _you_ a name, didn't we?" I said with a bit of a grunt as Morry collided with me at full speed. He emitted a happy squeal and wrapped himself fully around me.

"That's not funny oh my god is it gonna _eat_ you?" I heard a startled _mrow_! and the fast patter of feet as Max, evidently, scooted further backward and almost ran over Josie.

"No, Morry is not going to eat me," I said, allowing myself to smile as Morry released me from his grasp and moved backwards, extending pseudopods to wave them excitedly. "He eats only sucrose- and glucose-based foods: in the vernacular, Morry lives on candy. He might enjoy tickling you, however."

"You... created... a tickle monster? And you named it... Morry?"

I patted Morry on his uppermost surface, the closest he really came to a head; he emitted pleased chirps and snuggled against my hand. "_Your_ name is Maximum Ride. I don't really think you have much to say on the matter of naming. And he doesn't just enjoy tickling-"

Morry sprang. For a fifty-four-kilo, amoeba-like mass, he can _move_. There was a faint squeal as Max almost went sliding backward, but managed to arrest herself somehow.

"Oh my god," she said as Morry wrapped himself around her torso, chirping happily all the while. "Oh my god."

"-he also enjoys, ah, 'snuggles'," I finished as Morry began to engage in the activity in question, nuzzling against Max in much the manner a puppy might.

"Good," she said, "I'd hate to die by tickling. _Why_ do you need a tickle monster?"

"We don't _need_ one," I said as Morry extended a pseudopod upward and 'licked' her face - I wished I had a pocket camera to better capture her expression, but I knew I'd have to make do with the security logs. "Morry needed a home and we gave him one."

"That is so not your style," she grumbled, without nearly the sarcasm she had shown earlier.

Morry continued his snuggling, though his excited vocalizations had lessened in number and volume.

I shrugged. "He also has a measurable antidepressant effect. We're trying to reproduce the compound that gives those effects as a pill, but we're not having much luck."

"You know, usually when that happens you guys vivisect your victim and move on." She would've had more effect, I must say, if she hadn't been mostly covered in a cooing orange animal that was rubbing a pseudopod against her cheek contentedly.

"Morry has too good of an effect on morale for us to get rid of him," I told her honestly. That, and anyone who suggested we get rid of him would be the one to get vivisected. "He's not hard to keep, either."

"You could make more of him," she suggested, "sell them as house pets. Work like a charm."

"If we find out a way to do so, we will," I said, thinking of the security tapes. Maximum Ride nonconfrontational... perhaps if we kept Morry around her at all times... think of the property damage it would prevent. How could I pitch that to Morry's 'fan club', though?

"I kind of want one," she admitted, gingerly patting Morry's back, causing him to emit a sound not unlike the purr of a cat. "Like, gimme a call when you make more..." She smiled, and then seemed to suddenly realize what she was doing: she locked eyes with me, a deadly serious expression on her face wiping away the smile. "This never happened, right?"

"Never," I agreed.

"Good," she said, and gently pushed Morry away from her. "Down, boy. Don't want anyone to think I'm going soft, right?"

"Exactly," I said, as Morry briefly curled himself around my legs before slithering to the corner to finish his feeding time. I would fulfill Max's wishes to the best of my ability, but intra-facility sharing of these tapes would be invaluable as a demonstration that even the most destructive of people can have a soft side, and as an exhibit of Maximum Ride's encounter with our resident snuggle monster.

It would also make for excellent blackmail.

* * *

I slipped off my shoes in the vestibule of the next ward Max had shown interest in. This was more of a room, rather than a large ward, but there were still special precautions to follow.

I didn't touch the keypad, turning instead to face Max. "No sudden movements, no sudden noises," I said. Josie, who had draped herself across the back of the wheelchair, yawned hugely, and I had to stifle a smile. "Is that clear?" I didn't have to ask her to take off her shoes, since she was in the wheelchair, but I still had to be clear over the other requirements.

"Sure, sure," she grumbled, hands poised on the wheels. "Let's go. It can't be _that_ bad."

I entered my keycode and waited patiently as the door opened; due to the nature of the occupants of this room, there could be nothing startling in the vicinity, including the door.

The door eased fully open and I stepped inside, the tile floor cool under my sock feet. The tile was the reason for the no-shoes rule; shoes on tile were deemed too startling for the occupants of this room, as were alarms, which were instead mounted near the door to the hall.

Max wheeled herself in after me, and I stepped aside to let her pass. Josie hopped down from the back of the chair and rubbed herself against my calf; I bent down to stroke her. "Good cat," I said; in response I received a _mrow_.

The talking-cat project was still in development.

The wheelchair stopped - I could see it in my peripheral vision - and I heard Max's incredulous voice.

"Kittens? You brought me to see _kittens_?"

She wheeled around to look at me in disbelief, eyebrows raised and arms spread to indicate the _kittens_ gamboling on the floor.

"Not just kittens," I said, keeping my voice low and even. "There's a reason we have special containment procedures for these, ah, creatures. And I would thank you not to _shout_, please."

As I should have expected, Max ignored me.

"Seriously? _Kittens_? I cannot _believe_ this-"

The kittens demonstrated the reason why we had them in containment by puffing into nine not-quite-identical balls of fur, all mewling pitifully. Four of the kittens had been sleeping in the corner where their bed lay, and remained awake for only a moment before falling back asleep - as soon as they lost consciousness, they resumed normal kitten form, which was a fascinating and well-studied consequent of their abilities: the ability to 'puff' was only available when one of the kittens was conscious. If one was awake, the rest had the ability to 'puff' in their sleep.

It had been a fascinating study.

For the second time in fifteen minutes, I found myself confronted by Maximum Ride, undone by something by sheer warrant of its aesthetic attractiveness, or, as some might say, its _cuteness._

"Oh jeez," she said, as the five remaining conscious kittens rolled towards her in puffball form. Two split off to investigate myself and Josie, and the other three proceeded onward, mewling all the while. "How the - that can't be natural," she said, as the puffballs nudged at the footrests and wheels of the chair, stymied as usual by vertical surfaces. "Don't tell me you found a way to manipulate _cute._"

I shrugged. The two kittens that had approached me were contentedly snuggling against Josie, who, I should venture to say, looked tolerant of the whole affair, though rather impatient. "We may have. Testing is ongoing with them, or else we'd have-"

"What, terminated them?" she snapped, leaning to the side to pick up an armful of kitten, all three of whom squeaked at her loud voice and angry tone.

The pair of kittens at my feet had begun to relax, but when Max snapped at me, immediately went back to puffball status. Josie nuzzled them, rubbing the side of her head against one of them, and I could swear that, when she looked up at me, I saw exasperation there.

"No. Other than their... unique abilities, they're normal kittens. Several staff members are on a waiting list to adopt one as soon as we finish our investigatory work with them."

"Sure," said Max, her tone as skeptical as her arms and lap were full of kittens, now deflated from their puffball state into normal, wriggling young cats.

My hearing is exceptional, if I may say so, but I did not hear the alarm begin to shriek in the corridor until Max winced and grabbed her temples in pain. "What _is_ that?"

The kittens re-puffed, and I knew what it had to be: containment breach on something too dangerous to be kept in a calm ward like this, or Morry's. Something dangerous.

Max looked at me in horror and perhaps a little fear as I turned to the door. I pressed my palm to the nearly-invisible identification square and spoke my name, gave my override code and the date.

Both doors to the outside opened simultaneously: the one into the vestibule, and the one out of it into the hall.

I turned back to Max. Two of the kittens scampered out of her lap, turning into puffballs just before they hit the floor. The other, a grey tabby, clung to her shirt with its tiny claws, seemingly content and perfectly unaware of the situation.

"You have to leave," I told her.

"Who made you the boss of me?" The grey tabby, oddly, was undisturbed, and remained unpuffed.

"You leave under your own power, or I have you taken from here." I kept my voice cool, focusing on a series of calming internal images; a useful technique which I had learned in Holland. The _only_ useful thing to come out of those miserable years, as far as I was concerned. "There is something loose in this facility. I did not plan for this to occur, but given that it has, our meeting must be at an end."

"It couldn't have come faster." She rolled forward slightly; I stepped between her and the door.

"I am not finished with you, Maximum," I said, focusing on an image of ice. "As I told you, you are desperately ill. Without my help, you will die. With it, I may be able to cure you. Today is the first of May. You have until the first of June to make your decision; no later than that day, you must contact me with your choice. Jeb knows how to contact me."

"Okay, fine, first of June, I got it," she said, eyes flitting between me and the door.

"You'll need my help to make your escape successful," I said, as the alarm continued to wail outside. "Go right out of the door into the hall; take the third left, then the second right. Leave the wheelchair by the door and I will take care of it. You should be perfectly able to fly; if that is not the case, remain by the door and I'll have someone sent to assist you." I stepped aside, my message complete, most of it made up on the spot.

"Great. Thanks." She began to wheel past me.

"You can keep the kitten. I believe he's fond of you." Josie rubbed herself against my calf.

Max turned back to look at me. "I think I will, doc. I've seen enough. Don't expect my call."

With that, she began wheeling determinedly out of the door. I checked my watch; I would give her two minutes to begin her escape, and then I would go to assist in the containment of whatever had escaped. I heard no boots in the hall, which confirmed to me that it must be in a different wing or on a different floor.

I leaned against the wall; there had been a day when I would have simply sunk to the floor and let the presence of the kittens and Josie calm me, but despite all my efforts to the contrary, I was growing older. I _could_ have sat on the floor, but I'd have paid for it in stiffness when my self-appointed time came to answer the alarm.

I had given myself a month's time to work out what I could possibly do for Max - I had phrased it as giving her time to choose, but it doubled as planning time for myself. Suppose she were to take my offer - what could I even do to save her?

I had only had her here for a matter of days, not nearly long enough to begin combatting whatever problem was killing her slowly in the process of changing her 'in etwas reich und sonderbar'.

The overproduction of cerebrospinal fluid must have begun long before she collapsed in my office, but why had it suddenly stopped? The anesthesiologist had commented to me about her vocal cords feeling 'strange' as he passed the breathing-tube down her throat. I had neglected to ask him how he meant that - I would have to track him down later. And there were the curious pinfeathers beginning to sprout on her neck and arms - those, I was sure, had not been present the last time I saw her.

I knew for certain: no one could predict what would befall her next, not even I. My instincts told me it was chancing it even to let her out of this place, the only one capable of treating her, for a month: who knew what might happen in the next thirty-one days?

I glanced at my watch; my two minutes were up and the alarm had not ceased, continuing its high-pitched wail. For me not to at least make an attempt to assist would look odd.

But there was no rule saying I had to abandon Max's problems to solve this new one: her problems were thorny ones indeed, and I would need all the time I could find to make headway on solving them.

There was another issue compounding the problem of Max's illness; thanks to Jeb, I had at least some data on her. He had hinted, though, that the second-oldest member of her flock, one of the surviving males, was also showing symptoms similar to what I had seen in Max.

I had not the remaining pride to regard them as my children, but I did fear for them, that these lives I had helped to create should be torn so swiftly from the world. In time they might correct some few of the wrongs which I had committed in my own years, but if I did not make an attempt to treat them for their ills, I would be complicit in their untimely deaths as surely as any man who stands by while a child drowns for lack of a rescuer.

I determined that I must cure him as well, and discover in him the cause of this illness, and thus the means of ensuring it would never recur.

I have caused enough death in my lifetime; it is only right that I use the time remaining to me to preserve life.

* * *

This chapter comes with a few notes.

I have about four thousand more words of this in draft form. Those and what's up now were written last year in National Novel Writing Month in a desperate attempt to pad my wordcount. Thus, that first draft was pretty messy. I've cleaned it up, but there're probably a few dangly ends here and there anyway. Please pay them mind and openly mock me for them. I consider it a learning experience.

Yes, I make a practice of researching the fuck out of any medical background my fics have. Full-leg transplants are possible, but uncommon, and a severe overproduction of cerebrospinal fluid results in the condition hydrocephalus, not in your head exploding. I do research, but that doesn't mean I don't then use that research as a point to jump off and make things up pretty much wholesale.

And as a final note for this chapter: I've cribbed some of ter Borcht's _Kinder_ in this and following chapters from the SCP Foundation, mainly because I was in a hurry and needed something for Max to interact with. Morry is SCP-999, and the 'pufferkittens' are SCP-2558-J.

As a general note for the fic as a whole: the idea goes to the wonderful EndOfTheEarth. I have completely ruined it, and must beg forgiveness.


	3. Containment

Chapter Three: Containment

The containment breach had occurred, I discovered, in the area of the facility where we housed the dangerously ill subjects - not the ill of body, whom we cared for in the medical wing, but the ill of mind, those who rebelled against we who attempted to cure them and ease their lives. We had offered them kindness, refuge from death and pain, and they had rejected our offer.

I was glad as I hurried towards the breach; had Max remained a moment longer she would have asked to see portions of the facility such as this. In the service of truth I could not bear to hide them from her, but neither could I bear to show to her the darkest portions of my new life.

I once had struggled for words to describe the subjects we housed; with sadness and relief I had abandoned the strictures of English in my search for words. _Kinder_, I called them, at least in my thoughts - the troubled children of our collective sins.

Today's problem child had come to us from an Itex affiliate; he had been found crouched along a roadside in the desert somewhere. Perhaps he had been dumped there to get rid of him; perhaps he had escaped. Either way, somehow he had survived, and come into our care.

Two men had died to bring him here; the man who found him and brought him to our attention, and the first man of ours to try and bring him home.

Naturally, none of us were exactly kindly disposed towards this latest arrival among our collection of _Kinder_. He showed no remorse for the deaths he had caused; he was aware that he had caused them, but cared no more than an animal does. Perhaps less.

I could not bring myself to despise him; even he might have value to us, and it was worth the effort to contain him, attempt to civilize him, here. But I missed my colleague; if I could have exchanged his killer for him, a death for a death, I would have done it in an instant.

As it was, although I did value his presence (if we had not picked him up - who would have? Unlike some of Itex's other abandoned children, he was mostly normal in appearance)... I would have given much to grant myself authorization to use lethal force against him, to give him an end to the existence he had spent struggling against every force he met.

I would have left him to the ministrations of our security team had it not been this particular subject - any other and I would have stayed with the cats to soothe my nerves. But this child - his body did not accept the standard tranquilizers, and we could not afford to risk his death by using bullets to subdue him.

Thus, rather than expend delicately-calibrated tranquilizers developed specially for him every time he disagreed with us, the agreement among the team working with him was that, unless it were impossible, we would apply non-violent means to restrain and re-contain him.

In practice, though it was usually possible for a member of the team to 'talk him down' into relative calm, I found myself called to subdue him more often than I liked. The team working with him claimed that I was quicker to subdue him than anything short of a tranquilizer dart or a bullet to the brainstem.

He had not gotten far after breaching his containment; the security team on duty in the 'violent wing' had backed him into a corner, where he snarled and paced like an animal.

"Sorry I'm late," I said to the team leader, trying to suppress my panting for breath - I had run most of the way from the room where I had left Josie. "Has anything important happened?"

A shake of the head sufficed for 'no', but the efficiency of the wordless communication was canceled out when the team leader amended himself. "Well, yes. Danny boy has been asking for you. Specifically you," he added in response to my raised eyebrows of doubt.

'Danny boy', as the security teams most often on duty in the 'violent wing' liked to call our most troublesome child, was screeching in anger at a member of the team who had stepped too close to him; he had wrapped his claw-like hands around the tranquilizer gun held tight in the team member's gloved hands and was shouting into his face in a nasally-accented voice I knew all too well.

"-ya do that again and I'mma turn ya into _hamburgah_ is what I'm gonna do, fuckface, so don't you dare fuckin touch me-"

The security team member, I saw with a measure of amusement, was literally shaking in his boots - who would not, when berated by a seven-foot monster with claws on its hands and a nasal accent?

One of Danny's ears swiveled forward even as he continued to berate the poor fellow, and he broke off in mid-sentence to address me. It was a disarming conversational habit, constantly switching threads, but nowhere near as disarming as Danny's propensity to spontaneously disembowel anyone who displeased him. Or anyone who didn't displease him, depending on his mood.

"Hey doc, how ya been," he said, releasing the tranquilizer gun and allowing the man he had been threatening to step away. "If it ain't my favorite scumbag."

"Hello, Daniel," I said. Compared to him Max was _nothing_. "What's the trouble?"

He drew himself up to his full height. "Well, I was gonna take me a walk, get out and see the sun for once, and these guys says I can't do that. And I says, well, I'm a free man and I'm gonna take me a fuckin walk, and you can go fuck ya mother if ya don't like it. And this alarm keeps going off, it's really makin me mad, with all this fuckin wee-ooo bullshit goin on while I'm trying to have a conversation. So I says, look, I'm goin outside whether you like it or not, if you get out of my way ya gonna be a lot less dead, ya understand?"

I nodded. At one point I'd been fascinated by his vocabulary - _where_ had he picked up that vocabulary, that accent, those patterns of speech? - but at this point it all blended together. The members of the team assigned to him agreed with me to a man; after a while, Daniel's ranting all blurred together, until all you had to do was nod and agree in the right places. "Then what happened, Daniel?"

"Well, _then_." He crossed his arms. "Then these guys is tellin me I can't have no walk without someone gives me permission, and I says the way they have it I can't take a shit without getting permission from somebody, I'm a free man and I got my rights, and one of them is the right to take a fuckin walk when I wanna take a fuckin walk, y'know? They says, Danny boy, you ain't got no rights, not unless one of the docs says you do, if they say you don't you don't. So I says fine, I'll stay right here, I ain't goin nowhere until one of the docs shows up, and I ain't goin back inside unless it's one of the head honchoes sayin I can take a walk, takin my side of the issue, yeah? And I knowed you was one of the head honchoes and I seen you around before, so I made up my mind I was gonna stay until I saw you, doc." His eyes were dark brown; as they studied me I had the feeling of being watched by an inhuman predator of some sort which was judging me by its own strange standards, even as I judged it by mine.

"Then what?" I dropped my gaze; his staring had begun to unnerve me, but I had the sense that I had just been challenged to an animalistic contest of dominance, and lost. No matter. I was the one in control: if I deemed it appropriate, I could have him killed - not that it was as simple as my only giving the word, but Daniel's life hung in the balance more than he knew. All those involved with his case were waiting for him to slip up again; the general consensus was that we had learned all we could from his particular case, and that the only real thing we could do for him now would be to kill him. We couldn't loose him upon the world as he was now, and our efforts to make him a civilized man, or at least capable of functioning in society, had met with flat failure across the board. He could stay here with us, or be turned out into the world.

As much as he longed for sunshine and freedom, and expressed it every chance he got - Daniel could never truly know either, barring a complete psychological miracle. And I doubted, greatly doubted, that that was in the cards.

"I waited for ya to show up, doc. I says to these guys I'm gonna stay right here in the corner until you come walkin down the hall, but they don't believe me, they never do. And this fuckhead-" He pointed at the team member he'd been arguing with when I arrived. "This fuckhead says I need to watch it or he's gonna put in a request to have my sorry ass terminated. He gets all up in my face and he says that. Well, I couldn't just let that _go_, doc, so I gave him a little piece of my mind. And that's when you walked in." He shrugged. "So you tell me, what's the trouble?"

"I don't know, Daniel," I said, tiredly searching my mind for the best thing to say. Normally I could spar with him for quite a while, or at least long enough to get the situation under control. Today I had already dealt with Max, who was enough for a _week_. "Right now... I am very sorry, but I will try to arrange for you to have some free time on the grounds, _if_ you are on your best behavior. You'll have to be accompanied, of course," I continued, watching his face, especially the eyes, for any sign of anger, "but I am afraid it is the best I can do."

Another shrug. "Sounds fine, doc."

"Thank you, Daniel," I said, meaning it more honestly this time than usual. If I'd had to suffer through one of his petty outbursts, the likelihood was that there would have been a tragic little accident with one of the pistols the security team carried.

"Nah, thank _you_." He paused, brown eyes wide and unblinking - their color was average, but unlike in humans the white was invisible, leaving him with pure brown eyes like a dog's. Some sort of half-wild thing, he reminded me of sometimes, ready to turn on its master at a moment's notice.

"Is there anything else?"

I waited for his answer, thinking of coffee, of the chair in my office and Josie purring from her customary perch wherever I would be most inconvenienced by her presence.

"Nah," he decided, and laced his hands on the back of his head, the signal for the security team to escort him back inside; it was our common signal that he wasn't going to try anything funny while they escorted him, that the hijinks were over for the time being.

"Goodbye," he called back over his shoulder.

I waved one hand to him.

* * *

Josie bit my hand.

"_Ouch_, Josie," I said, shaking the injured appendage and darting my best reproachful look at her.

She hissed, but submitted herself to further thoughtful stroking by me, after an offering of truce via belly rub.

I had been studiously not thinking of Johannes since Max left, but now, in near-silence and something approaching peace, I allowed my mind to return to the topic it refused to keep away from, the wound I could not stop myself from picking at.

In 1987, Hans had been nineteen; I had been twenty-eight. He was the younger brother of one of my colleagues at the lab where I was working then, and I had met him by chance at a Christmas party. The young man was unusually intelligent, even by the standards of the elite cabal in which I began to occupy a place; he did not outsmart me, but he came close upon occasion. Despite the difference in our ages we had become fast friends.

I do not remember the car crash that took his legs; I was lucky and escaped with a broken arm and a concussion, but the concussion erased my memories for a two-week span before and after the crash. I know that I was not driving, but I am not sure who was.

Hans claimed to remember everything, but I had never pressed him for details; it was in the past, what did it matter?

I had known him more than half his life; he had known me for not quite half of mine. I trusted him not to lie to me.

Yet still, there was a part of me that believed what Max had said, that he was whole again and walking the world as he had not in so many years.

Talk was cheap, though - the man Max had met might simply have taken my friend's name. Or he might have lied to her.

I was not sure which I would rather be true: that she had met Hans, or that she hadn't. I knew which she believed, but I wasn't sure which I believed.

Oh hell, I was confused.

I sighed and looked at my watch; according to my schedule I had a meeting to attend in twenty minutes.

* * *

As per usual, the meeting was incredibly dull.

I sat with my hands folded on the wooden table, pretending interest and pondering the possibility of a sandwich after the meeting; I hadn't had a chance to eat yet that day, aside from coffee that morning.

"Doctor?"

I wasn't the only person bearing that title in the room, but I responded anyway. "Yes?"

"What do you propose we do?"

It reflects sharply on my life that I had responded to exactly that question before with 'kill them'.

"I don't know," I admitted. "I've been preoccupied for the past two days dealing with Max."

There was a nod of recognition from a junior staff member; I had known him at Itex, one of the many victims of Max's penchant for inflicting huge amounts of collateral damage.

I frantically cast about for anything significant to submit to the conversation, eventually stumbling upon a hedge. "I'd suggest we allow the team a little more time to work before making a decision over their heads."

A nod from the head of the table. "What do you suggest in the matter of Max?"

"She's very sick," I told him. "I argued her into coming back in a month. By that time I believe her condition may have worsened to the degree we may be forced to admit her to our custody for a prolonged period of time. I don't anticipate it will be easy to cure her."

"Thank you."

The conversation moved on, and as I sat there thinking of coffee, I couldn't help but dwell on the piece of information I was keeping from them, a lie by omission: whatever she suffered from, it might affect her whole family. It certainly affected her brother.

Untreated, I wagered it would kill her.

* * *

I hate this chapter and everything about it. So you know. But I felt guilty not continuing.

Ter Borcht's voice is really starting to piss me off.

Anon replies:

Kenikitten, let me cite chapter and verse at you like a fuckass.

"**Entries not allowed: ... Any form of interactive entry: choose your adventure, second person/you based, Q&As, and etc."**

Some SYOC stories also fall under another clause:

"**Non-stories: lists, bloopers, polls, previews, challenges, author notes, and etc.**"

This occurs when the poster does not include any breath of plot, but only leaves a profile to be filled out and a request for characters.

Anyway, I'm a creeper with no life and that's why I read fanfic. Also it's a damn sight better than memorizing the anatomy textbook I haven't sold back yet.

Next chapter we return to Max, and after that I find in my files a terribad little piece of villainy that I think I'll post anyway because why not.


End file.
